Wargames 1983

Greetings Professor Falkan. Shall we play a game?

A film that aired around the time Cuba was a serious threat for America when there were discussions on the table over nuclear war. I think this film was a cultural response to that facade. However, eventually the threat died down and America entered their most prosperous era since they were founded.

But this film is nothing short of a classic. Every computer nerd around my age knows about the 1983 classic War Games.

"Strange game. The only winning move is not to play"

Was the line that is the most famous from that film. Basically messaging that nuclear war is futile, senseless and that no-one at all wins. It seems that is common sense!

Anyway, we start off the main film with David Lightman. A computer nerd back in the days when people that liked their IT were laughed at and not taken very seriously. His teachers mock him, he was a bit of a loner, and he only had one friend Jennifer (Played by Ally Sheedy) - although this wasn't Characterised in the film, I just noticed that about the Character. He was perfectly happy in his environment.

David is his spare time had become a computer hacker due to his good skills with tech and was able to break into school computers and change his grades and that of his friend. She couldn't believe what he was doing, although she was very pleased that he switched her grades in her failing classes to A. This also was a sort of fore-warning to places with lax security. We were only 3 years away from mainstream internet.

Later in the film we see that David managed to break into super duper sophisticated computer that was created by a Professor Falkan that he existed as David's idol. Professor Falkan had created a computer that could play chess, and David being David wanted to play games with it too. After all, that's what it was built for.

David had spent hours, in fact days trying to break into the password system of Professor Falkans computer, researching every last document known about him, and to which he found the password was his late son who passed away and he had named it after him. Joshua.

Amazed and excited that he managed to break into one of the first ever computers designed to solely play games he lists out the games and has the computer talk to impress his friend Jennifer. In reality it is just computer generated voice, but for the time it was really amazing.

Global Thermonuclear War is what they choose. It's a game that seems exciting to play, instead of boring games like chess and tic-tac-toe. David chooses a side and so does Jennifer, and they start battling to see who would come up tops of the generated world. David scrambles his fighters, and starts to prepare for war.

Meanwhile, in a bunker and in an undisclosed location the US Army get a notification that the Russians have scrambled their fighters and are preparing their nuke silos. It turns out that David has actually been dicing with the real world, and where in his head he thinks he is playing an innocent make believe game, he's actually playing Nuclear war in real time. The computer he broke into had been taken by the army and turned into an instrument of war.

Thus, the craziness ensues.

One of my favourites, and an all time classic. Would give it a try if you've never seen it and like old movies!